Blair and Brown launch euro campaign

Prime Minister Tony Blair today launched a campaign to persuade the British people of the case for entry into the European single currency.

In a joint Downing Street press conference with Chancellor Gordon Brown, Mr Blair committed his Government to build a "strong pro-European consensus in Britain".

He dismissed the idea that being pro-European meant rejecting Britain, insisting that being at the heart of the EU was "the proper and modern expression of the true British national interest".

It would be a "cruel denial of our own proper self-interest" if the UK cut itself adrift from the EU, he warned.

The Prime Minister's comments came a day after Mr Brown ruled out an immediate referendum on the euro on the grounds that just one of his five economic tests had been met.

Mr Blair said: "It is time to make the argument for Britain in Europe, to take on those who believe if we are pro-British, we must be anti-European, to defeat the false case that if Britain is a full-hearted member of the EU we lose our identity as a nation and to show, in a world that is moving closer together and being transformed by globalisation, it would be a cruel denial of our own proper self-interest to cut ourselves adrift from the major strategic and economic alliance right on our doorstep."